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Fundamentalist Forum, self pitying and rabble rousing! Fearful Hugh Keevins hits out at Celtic Fan Media access

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Hugh Keevins has become the latest traditional reporter to attack Celtic for creating a Fan Media Conference for Ange Postecoglou- a Fundamentalist Forum as he put it.

For around 50 years Keevins has shared his opinions and observations on Scottish football. Following on from Jimmy Sanderson and Richard Park he has become the voice of Radio Clyde while writing for The Scotsman, Daily Record and the Sunday Mail.

These days there is another outlet for opinion and debate with the tight-knit world of the old media under constant threat from what some might call Internet Bampots.

Without the backing of major media players and massive advertising budgets football fans have found alternative outlets on their desktops, laptops, tablets and even their mobile phone.

Many of these websites, forums and podcasts speak the language of fans, the voice the questions and touch the subjects that the traditional media would rather avoid to stay in the fold.

Celtic have been slow off the mark to engage with Fan Media which has allowed it to blossom. Alternative views, challenging the way the club is run, the football authorities and a variety of issues around the game that also spills into Scottish society.

Questioning the SFA over a variety of matters seems out of range for Keevins and the old style press corps. When the editor of The Celtic Star raised some of these issues with Ange Postecoglou it made fans sit up and listen- it also shook the old media who turned to their digital rivals creating the news for their printed titles.

It is a long long way from the closed shop that Keevins grew up in and developed a career within, on the digital version of the Daily Record he made clear his disdain for the form of competition to the cosy old ways of the past.

Celtic have allowed random supporters at a fan media event to arbitrarily accuse the press of being hostile towards the club’s new manager Ange Postecoglou.

This is not only devoid of any evidence to support the claim, it is also self-pitying rabble-rousing and a load of old cobblers into the bargain.

Rangers’ relations with the media over the last 12 months have been strained at best, bewilderingly so given their triumph on the park. So, to use an old saying, I’m not going to go anywhere I’m not wanted.

I’ll just put up with having an opinion of my own and exercise my right to express it, within the law as it relates to libel, whenever I choose.

And in the spirit of free speech, Celtic’s flirtation with fan media events could be short lived.

Martin O’Neill told Australian TV last week he felt the quickest way for Postecoglou to ingratiate himself with the Celtic support would be to beat Rangers at Ibrox on August 29.

The quickest route to the cancellation of fan press conferences, I would suggest, would be for Ange to lose that derby game.

In any conventional press room the manager would be asked in a business-like manner for his thoughts on what went wrong.

Any fundamentalists’ forum, post Ibrox, would throw up an altogether less constrained form of social discourse.

I don’t see Celtic’s PR department exposing Postecoglou to such a potentially confrontational environment this early in his acquaintanceship with our wild and woolly ways.

The conference that Keevins is referring to took place nine days ago which is one part of the problem old media is facing. The answers from that conference were across websites and Social Media within a couple of hours of being asked. Fan media is making new breakthroughs, upsetting the applecart with Keevins and others well aware of the direction that the wind is blowing. It isn’t favourable to the old traditions.

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